


Co-writing

by podcastalien



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Eventual Smut, M/M, Slow Burn, angst with happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 23:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17817566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/podcastalien/pseuds/podcastalien
Summary: after a messy divorce, famous author Bill Denbrough is having trouble with his next project. Luckily or unluckily, his agent sends in someone to help.





	Co-writing

**Author's Note:**

> I know I did not just spend like 3 hours total writing this outline and writing the first chap for everyone on tumblr to ignore it. Pls read this for my sanity. You don’t even have to like it. You can even tell me how much you hate it. Kiss kiss.

Tucked away in an  extravagant corner of upstate New York, inside of an immaculate, mismatched house; past the front room with its illusions of taste, but true to its wealth; past the slightly dingier kitchen, littered with takeout boxes that unify the rich and the poor; up a spiral staircase, down an empty hallway; 

Inside a cluttered yet expensively decorated bedroom, to the left of the door, on a bedside table,    
  
The newest version of a begrudgingly purchased phone rings.    
  
And Bill Denbrough continues to sleep.    
  
The phone rings two more times before he finally opens his eyes and stretches.   
Once more, while looking at the contact on the screen and sighing. He picks up before it can ring a fourth time.    
  


Silence hangs on the line, Bill Denbrough is not one to speak 

first.   
  
There is a sharp breath in on the other side of the call, “Bill?”   
  
“Unfortunately,” he answers. 

  
He can feel the person roll his eyes on the other side of the call.    
  
Another wounded sigh, “This is your agent.”    
  


“You don’t need to say that every time. I have your contact in the phone you made me buy.”

 

The man replies stingily quickly to this, evaporating his former hesitation,  “No shit. But you can’t read my contact when you’re on one of your stupors, Bill.” His voice is strained, an itchy, iterated sort of tired, clearly using up his last inch of patience on Bill. 

“And are we done with the phone thing yet? Do I really need to explain to you why you need a phone? Do you want to waste my time that much?”

 

Bill pinches the space between his eyebrows together, 

“No, Eddie, I don’t.” He scans the room for something that will get him out of this, his eyes don’t find anything substantial enough for an excuse. He waits for the next of many, tiny, verbal atom bombs to drop from the mouth of his agent. 

 

“Okay, so you admit you don’t want to waste my time?” His tone is short and knowing, luring Bill into a spoken trap.

 

“Is that not what I just said?”

 

“That’s what you say and yet there’s something that should’ve been in my email yesterday.” 

 

Bill is clued in enough to know that had something to do with him. 

_ Fuck,  _

_ What was it? _

_ I remember him telling me about it.  _

_ But I must’ve been-  _

 

As he often did, Bill forgets there’s a silence forming where he should be talking.

 

“Bill!” Eddie exclaims at him, somehow without shouting. 

 

“What?” He startles. 

 

“The screenplay! The first draft! It was supposed to be done last night! I’ve got the exces at Netflix on my ass about this thing you came up with and you can’t even remember what it is!” 

 

He lets Eddie stir for a second, believing that he’ll have something else to say. That’s how this usually worked. If he let his short, fiery agent rant about something, Bill knew he could and would rant forever. 

But Eddie just breathes in again and lets the silence run.

 

They both know that Eddie has said everything he could say in the past year to put Bill back together. They were friends before they were coworkers. Eddie had spent too many nights on the phone with him, stubbornly trying to help him, pull him out of whatever this dark cloud was, by force. Of course it hadn’t worked, as this morning Bill woke up to the sound of a call, not the sound of an alarm, with an empty bottle of gin in bed with him. 

Eddie tried and tried again to reach out not as an agent, but as a friend, and had been turned away enough times to now know better. 

But he still had a job to do. That job, first and foremost in his mind, was to keep Bill from going broke. He had given his friend three months. 

Three months after begrudgingly signing his divorce papers, Eddie had Bill sign onto a book deal. And another. And another. And another. All failing and all costing them. Of course Bill didn’t seem to care. And at first, Eddie had been gentle, told him to keep going, just to do what he could. But as it turned out, all Bill could seemingly do was drink and call Eddie drunkenly, asking him to extend the deadlines, letting slip that he hadn’t actually started. 

 

Eddie watched as the fragile relationships with publishing houses seemed to crumble, even at the drop of Bill’s world known name. 

 

He doesn’t know what to say, “I’m sorry, Ed. I know I’ve been shit. I don’t know what to do about it.”

 

He can hear his voice break, Eddie never had a poker face. “Don’t make me the bad guy here, Bill. I’m trying to help. Even though I don’t really know how to now.”

Bill closes his eyes, “I know.” 

 

Eddie sucks in his breath one more time. “Look, this is big money okay? I know that’s not what you’re worried about right now, but it will be in about two years when this all goes to shit and you’re living with me and my loudmouth boyfriend and my cat who hates you.” 

 

“What do you need me to do now?”

 

“Do you remember what you have agreed to?”

 

He stayed quiet, letting that answer for him. 

 

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no. What you’ve signed onto is an eight part Netflix  horror series based on a real life haunted house. You sent me the bones of an outline, I assume inebriated, six months ago. Do you still have it?”

 

Silence. 

 

“I will email it to you.” 

 

“Alright.” Bill swallowed, ready to hang up.

 

“I’m not finished.”

He paused. 

“Since this will require a fair amount of historical accuracy to get past the google wielding public-“

 

“It’s fiction,” Bill cut him off. 

 

“Even still. I am sending an expert on the house’s history to co write with you. He can answer your questions and integrate the historical aspect. 

He will also be a human person with a pulse and a brain. So play nice and do your work. Don’t waste his time. He’ll be staying at the nearest hotel but I’m making sure he spends at least three hours a day at your house, minimum.” 

 

“Am I allowed to ask his name?”

 

“It’s Mike. Hanlon. He’ll be there on Wednesday.”

 

“That’s in two days.”

 

“That’s right, better get cleaning.” 

 

Neither party says anything for a tense second, before Eddie softens.

“I know this is hard for you. I’m always here when you need me, anything, okay?”

 

Bill says nothing. 

Eddie’s voice is sad, empathic, 

_ pitying,  _

brain fills in for him. 

“I love you, Bill.”

Bill mumbles, “You too.” And hangs up. 

 

He slams 3 ibuprofen for his headache, dry. 

He has some cleaning to do. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Pls leave a comment for my crops.   
> Tumblr- @coffeekaspbrak


End file.
